


And I am so tired. And I would like to sleep under trees

by PrefectMoony



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, M/M, Pre-Canon, we love Trina in this house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25844593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrefectMoony/pseuds/PrefectMoony
Summary: Quietly, but still so sure, she tells him that they won’t be those sorts of parents, that they’ll have the perfect tight knit family that people envy. On those nights she pretends not to see how he averts his gaze, or how his face goes ashen or how he squeezes her oh so tightly for a moment before abruptly letting go and turning away for the night.Trina pretends that she  doesn’t feel so cold, that he actually does want her. She can’t imagine a world where she doesn’t want him and Trina doesn’t understand how she’s become so needy, so docile.But then the sun comes up the next day, and in the bright morning light he smiles in that way that makes him look so devastatingly handsome, and Trina falls in love with him all over again like it’s a song she’ll never forget the lyrics to.
Relationships: Marvin/Trina (Falsettos), Whizzer Brown/Marvin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	And I am so tired. And I would like to sleep under trees

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken by Fyodor Dostoevsky

It’s a brisk spring day in the small New York suburb Trina calls home— trees gleaming the green of rebirth in the late afternoon light. She’s panting after a long day of exploration, knees scratched up and hands bruised and a dopey smile on her thin lips.

The moment she steps into her spacious, well kept home, her father collects her into his arms and presses Trina tight against him— She’s a tiny, slip of a thing for a six year old and he’s the strongest man she’s ever known, so it’s not very hard— He calls her his scrappy monkey in that doting, absentminded way of his, and Trina’s mother laments that she’s not as brilliant as Silvia or as beautiful as Sarah or a boy like Jonny.

Trina’s always liked not fitting into any of her boxes.

.-

She falls in love with the idea of seeing the world, becoming her own person, finding her own path and making her dreams come true, even if she doesn’t know what those are yet.

.-

Trina twirls the globe on her father’s desk every night before bed, keeps track of each country her finger lands on— Nigeria and Egypt and France and Canada too— She promises herself she’ll see them all.

.-

Trina’s sixteen when she loses her virginity to her first ever boyfriend in the back of his dad’s pickup, under the stars and amidst giggling kisses that taste like cheap wine. He’s not Jewish, and she knows her mother would cry if she found out as much, but it’s fun. He always makes her laugh and calls her lovely even though Trina has always known that she never could astound— thin and flat chested with sandy hair that refused to be styled in any sort of way. But she’s never minded, Trina likes how her father called her a modest, unassuming beauty, made her feel special, like the fella had to look that much closer— to like Trina for her soul before her body.

“How modern,” Trina’s mother tells her, frown firmly on her lips. She hears the meaning and disapproval behind it. Trina hears the words she wants to toot, the “Trina you’ll never find a good God fearing boy if you keep talking that nonsense,” she know she believes.

She doesn’t care.

Trina still likes the fact that she’ll never fit into her mother’s boxes, but also she’d like to believe that she’ll still find a boy who agrees with the sentiment, and still wants her for all she is.

Yes, Trina would like to be wanted. She’d really like that, feeling as if she were the single point of focus for one boy to orbit around, like She’s worth the effort. Like it didn’t matter that she isn’t as brilliant as Silvia or beautiful like Sarah, or a boy like Jonny.

Trina would really like to be wanted.

.-

Trina being the youngest girl meant that she got to see both her sisters getting married and having children and running their homes before she graduated high school. Trina got to see their pasted smiles and content touches. Trina got to see how lifeless their eyes were when they thought no one was paying attention.

Trina never got to see them fall in love. She’s determined that it’s something she’ll do.

.-

She’s excepted into NYU, and her mother grins that plastered way of hers, no doubt thinking that it’s a waste of money once Trina’ll settle down and have a family of her own. In contrary, Trina’s father smiles broadly, claps a hand on her slender shoulder and crows mazel tov.

She thinks that even if it’s just across town, she’s finally begun what she’s always set out to do. She’s making her own path.

.-

Trina meets him her junior year and his sophomore when she and some sorority girlfriends go down the river to Colombia to check out how they let loose in the ivy leagues.

It’s not exactly one of those earth shattering, government imploding, stars colliding moments that Trina grew up reading and fantasizing about, but when she catches his steely blue gaze from across the room, her heart stutters, and veins spike with adrenaline, and it’s more than enough to be able to recognize the raw magnetism she feels towards him, the intrigue.

The want.

He offers Trina an endearing half grin, and she can’t believe that small gesture makes something warm and delighted coil deep inside, cracking her ribcage open, like she were screaming at him to notice. Look at me, look! I’m here, I’m whole, I’m alive. Look at me damn it! Look!

He looks.

Trina doesn’t let him drop his gaze.

Never one to be passive, he just swaggers up to her— shoulders squared and this sort of charismatic air about him— a nod to the bravado held by those old Hollywood leading men like Gable or Tracey— like a man who knows exactly what he wants, and knows precisely how he’ll get it.

Trina hates how desperately she wants to be wanted by him.

.-

“You’re a maniac!” Trina shouts at him in the privacy of his far too large off campus apartment, feeling it when her cheeks flush red and chest begins to pound unevenly.

“Is that really the only insult you’ve got in your arsenal,” he sneers in that cold way of his— a different sort of detached than her father. Where the latter just seemed too busy— being pulled in a thousand directions to pay any one any particular mind— Marvin always seemed like he was tired of everything, all the time, like nothing was worth his attention for very long. His ribbing skirted on uncharitable and the superiority complex of being the only child of a well off, white collared family up town, was beyond repair.

He is hands down the worst person Trina knows.

But infuriatingly, just because she supposes God enjoys toying with her life— He’s also the best person Trina knows.

He’s the only one who’s ever called her darling— so sweetly sometimes that it makes her knees go weak. And he rubs small, comforting circles into Trina’s hands when they’re watching movies with friends and she’d really like to kiss him in front of everyone, even if it’s not proper. Sometimes he tells her how he was brought up with a father who was to busy popping pills in attempt to feel something in life to go out and spend the afternoon with his only son at an art exhibit or ball game, and a mother as frigid as the arctic who’s never expected anything but perfection from the heir to the family name. 

Sometimes in those quiet moments of contemplation between the pair of them under the cloak of night, Trina traces small flowers on the taught muscles of his hard stomach— everything about him is so hard, she’d like to infuse the flowers into him, their softness, their buoyancy.

Flowers are so lovely.

Quietly, but still so sure, she tells him that they won’t be those sorts of parents, that they’ll have the perfect tight knit family that people envy. On those nights she pretends not to see how he averts his gaze, or how his face goes ashen or how he squeezes her oh so tightly for a moment before abruptly letting go and turning away for the night.

Trina pretends that she doesn’t feel so cold, that he actually does want her. She can’t imagine a world where she doesn’t want him and Trina doesn’t understand how she’s become so needy, so docile.

But then the sun comes up the next day, and in the bright morning light he smiles in that way that makes him look so devastatingly handsome, and Trina falls in love with him all over again like it’s a song she’ll never forget the lyrics to.

Trina sees the way their friends preen at the pair of them, playfully teasing how she’s gotten herself the prettiest boy in town. And She likes that, likes that the girl who was always told she was nothing to spare a second glance at, got the guy who people blatantly stared after. Trina loves being wanted by him, even if sometimes he feels like he’s a thousand miles away.

On those nights, Trina either just acquiesces to the quiet or she pushes and prods until he has some semblance of feeling back in his voice and color to his pillar.

Tonight was the latter.

“You’re a jealous prick.”

“You were flirting with that son of a bitch right in front of me!”

“You weren’t even talking to me! It was embarrassing!” Trina argues, voice scathing.

“I don’t like it when other people play with my things,” Marvin intones, eyes leveling her with a withering glare.

She should probably correct him now. Trina should tell him she isn’t his, that his name isn’t branded on her ass. She should tell him that the disgusting idea that whatever he covets he keeps is insane and despicable and he needs to fucking grow up.

She doesn’t though.

He’s finally noticing her after a week of last minute dismissals and noncommittal hums. Trina can’t tell him those things less he stops wanting her all together, and this, the yelling and prodding at old wounds and the slamming of fists against hollow walls… This is want.

She races up to him, leaps into Marvin’s arms and kisses him hard and filthy.

It takes an extra moment for him to respond— for his tight lips to slightly loosen and for his hands to encircle her waste— but finally he does, and Trina’s heart feels like it’s gonna burst at the seams with relief.

He’s rough and unforgiving and he’s already had a beer to many for tonight and she’s just so happy to be wanted.

.-

Trina finds out she’s carrying Marvin’s child a week after his graduation.

“Oh.”

“I know,” her breath is hitched— terrified to his reaction. Trina knows that Marvin has got careful conceived plans for his entire future, that this— a child with her— it isn’t on the agenda for a long while yet. Hell she doesn’t even know if he wanted her to be his wife, and Trina reckons That kills her more than anything, that he’ll propose and she’ll never know that if it’s because he loves her or if it’s because he’s simply assuming the role of a responsible father. But the truth of the matter is that there’s not an inconsiderable Part of her that really doesn’t care a toss either way.

His blank expression finally morphs into something gentle, an emotion Trina can’t parse out glimmering in his pretty pale eyes— ordinarily so chillingly aloof.

“Marry me darling. Let’s have a tight nit family.”

Trina says yes because of course she does.

She says yes and she begins to cry and she kisses him and she pretends that he doesn’t feel so distant, so very far away, so very untethered. Trina says yes, and she loves him, and she wants him, wants this.

Trina says yes, because of course she does.

.-

Trina tells her boss that she’s expecting, and he tells her to come back as a receptionist once that’s done with. She doesn’t mind, not really. Trina never liked the smarmy lawyer she worked under, and besides, Marvin’s been hired as some hot shot investment banker. He makes more than enough for their family to flourish.

Sometimes Trina silently contemplates if his insistence on making a large salary has anything to due with the lifeless look in his eyes she catches when he thinks Trina isn’t paying attention— as if she isn’t constantly paying attention to him. Sometimes Trina wonders if history is destined to repeat itself and he’s like his father, so sad and lonely no matter what. Sometimes she thinks that she’s making a fuss out of nothing, trying to find adventure in the mundane.

.-

Trina gives up on her dream to explore the world, tells herself that once Jason is grown she and Marvin will embark on the adventures together. But for now, Trina paints blue skies and cotton candy clouds and lovely flowers on their son’s walls.

It settles the longing, the wanting that she once held as a starry-eyed school girl.

.-

Marvin’s distant— he’s always been distant. But now he’s spending late nights more often than not in the office, not coming home till hours after dinner and Jason’s put to bed and Trina has already begun trying to fall asleep.

She never could fall asleep without him besides her. She’s never been in a home without a man there, offering protection. Trina has begun to resent it, but she feels most protected in Marvin’s arms— even when those embraces start smelling like alcohol and she can see marks that she know she didn’t give him. Trina knows that she didn’t give him those marks because they have dry spells for months on end, and she hates how fucking unwanted she feels.

“It’s not your fault Trina,” Sarah sighs through the phone. “He’s a man, they always have pretty young things waiting in the wings. Especially when they’re wealthy. Especially when they look like your Marvin does.”

Trina does not feel better, not at all.

She somehow convinces herself that at least she’s the woman he comes home too at the end of the day. That despite his indiscretions, at least Marvin wants Trina to be the woman he has a family with. That despite it all, he’s her Marvin, and she’s his Trina, his wife. They chose one another, through thick and thin.

.-

Jason has a playdate at noon today.

Gingerly, Trina puts on her favorite olive jacket that Marvin had bought her for one of the nights of Hanukkah last year. She finds a pile of sweets in one of the pockets and a note written in Marvin’s crisp, precise hand.

Darling, Will you be my valentine.

Trina briefly thinks of the embarrassment of being treated for syphilis at her OBGYN only a week prior, the pity in the other woman’s eyes and judgment still embedded there.

She doesn’t crumple the note. She instead puts her lips to it. She tries to catch the scent of Marvin’s familiar cologne. How he took time to write this out and give it to her in as romantic of a gesture that he can muster.

Trina lets the wanting for him wash over her, and for the first time it feels like it will surely drown her instead of making her feel whole.

.-

Two weeks later when Trina is hanging up their guest’s, Whizzer Brown’s— who’s honestly more leg than man— jacket while Marvin leads the work friend to the dinner table that had been handed down to Trina by her great grandmother, she finds the very same pile of sweets in his pockets, and a note that looks like it’s been thumbed at numberless times. A note with the same crisp, precise hand.

It’s the first time it feels like a daggers been plunged right into her chest.  
  
.-

It’s hard to hate him, but Trina manages, reckons he hates her just as much if the cross way he’s staring her down in the empty kitchen five weeks later, is anything to go by.

They both know what it is, who they both are— who they’re orbiting so pathetically.

There’s a whole barrage of expletives Trina would like to spew at him- first and foremost being a slut, home wrecker— but she settles for just a skewering glower, and caustic , “your cake was disgusting.”

“Marvin doesn’t seem to mind my desserts,” he counters cooly— and God Trina hates him. Hates his doe eyes and big hair and bigger personality. Hates how young and beautiful and thrilling and charming he is. Hates how much Marvin loves him, how blatant he is even when he thinks he’s still pulling off this tableau. Hates how to Marvin Trina must look like the pathetic housewife and Whizzer the guy who had placed all the stars in the sky.

He’s wrong.

No matter what, he’ll always be the home wrecker, and Trina Marvin’s wife. She is the woman who grew up with him, put up with his nasty moods and relished his loving ones. She is the woman he told all his secrets to, all his insecurities and doubts. The mother of his child.

Truly, who is Whizzer Brown in the face of all that.

“He’ll never love you, not really. Not more than a warm body to spend a few hours with.”

“Funny,” Whizzer blinks owlishly. “I was just thinking the same about you.”

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

  
.-  
  
Marvin’s always wanted it all, Trina knows that now. Trina has always just wanted him and their tight knit family.

Trina doesn’t know how to reconcile those two things, but even worse…. Trina doesn’t think she wants to even try. Not anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so so much to the lovely souls who read this piece<3 <3
> 
> It would mean all the galaxies to me if you left a comment below letting me know what you thought!  
> I'm also on [Tumblr](http://Lennyx.tumblr.com)
> 
> With love  
> ~Len


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